Paper Stereo Speakers for LCD TVs or Movie Posters

April 27, 2009 - 1:57 am | 80 views

Technology.am (Apr. 27, 2009) —Taiwan researchers have produced a low-cost stereo speaker in paper for thin devices such as LCD TVs or movie posters.

Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) Engineers have already produced paper stereo speakers that will be used in cars from next year.

The paper stereo speaker is called Flexpeaker because you can roll it up or fold it like regular paper, and it will be used on movie posters. Researchers want mass production of these standard poster-size speakers (A2, or 60centimeters by 44cm) costing just US$20 each.

The special paper for stereo is made by inserting thin electrodes into the paper structure, where the electrodes receive audio signals and a prepolarized diaphragm. A special Flexpeaker adapter between the MP3 player and the speaker is used to play music through the paper.

But ITRI hope to build up a chip that will eliminate the adapter and allow you to plug a digital music player directly into the speaker.

The researchers will display its first Bluetooth enabled paper speaker in July, eliminating the need for wires, said Liou Chang-ho, project manager of ITRI’s Flexpeaker initiative.

Though it’s very good with sounds at frequencies between 500Hz to 20KHz, But there is one limitation with Flexpeaker, it doesn’t handle low frequency sounds well. That problem can be offset by adding a subwoofer to any system with the paper speakers, said Liou.

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